Because the piano has been drinking
And he's your friend not mine
Because the piano has been drinking
And he's not my responsibility...
-Tom Waits
The Story Before, Part 6:
The Laptop Has Been Drinking
As we head steadily toward the conclusion of this particular series, I must admit that it has not been the cavalcade of fond remembrances I expected.
And as such, I have nothing wise to say about the random smatterings that follow. I started writing them on Brent's laptop out of boredom during a mock trial practice, and finished them a month or so later during one of those great undefined gatherings at his house.
Who knows what any of it actually says? I didn't read it...
"The Baker's Dozen"
My name is Lenar Clark, and this is my Windows Story. Once, this idiot by the name of Brent A. Jones let me use his laptop. Brent had a sad and sick obsession with a girl named Anna Baker, and he would talk about it nonstop, and sometimes hang outside of her house. I know, because I would see him from the window of her living room. Anna and I had been seeing each other, but it was mostly a physical thing, with no real emotion, so I had to end it, even if she was an adequate kisser. (I wrote that just to mess with Brent's diseased mind.)
"You Suck"
It was that time of the month, and it was enough to make me want to shoot myself.
"Flashers and Blasters"
This one time, I was driving on Bannister Road with my acquantances, Justin, Andy, and Brent, when they claimed that some girls were flashing them. I looked over into the car of the flashers, and I realized that I recognized them. They were British Special Air Service agents, and they undoubtedly were there to kill Justin and myself because of an ugly little incident back in Iraq during Opertion: Desert Storm. I pulled off of the road quickly, just as one of them was aiming some type of crude rocketry projectile at the car. I know a missile was fired at us, and it was only by swerving to the left that my companions missed the fantastic explosion that followed.
Later, after dropping them off in front to their cars, I came to the realization that the only way to rid myself of the assassins was to take them all out, and not in the juvenile, self-delusional way Andy, Justin, and Brent seemed to imply. Arming myself with a beretta and a zippo lighter, I went to dispatch my dispatchers.
Tracking them down to their hideout, an abandonned Winchell's Donuts, I burned the whole place down and went to find a copy of Superman in Action Comics #761.
I love comic books.
"Vague Recollections of a Night in Vegas"
It was a far happier time... when anything was possible. After so many years of morose solitude, there was this indescribable feeling gripping my heart. It'd been such a long time since I'd felt it, I didn't even know the name anymore.
It was hope.
A few weeks later it was gone... faster than it could have ever come.
Some nights, walking up on a steep hill in Las Vegas, you can actually look out and see the high water mark. That place where the wave finally broke and rolled back on itself.
"We Now Join Our Episode Already in Progress"
"What the hell is that mad man doing?!" someone shrieked.
"I don't know,but is that blood on that bat?"
Since I remember their concerns, I must assume that I heard them. So, I guess it's equally as logical to assume that I just didn't care.
"That Night in the Snow"
I could hear Patsy Cline's "Crazy" lightly in the background, and it didn't sit right with me. Somehow, I felt completely focused on argument, and yet, I wasn't really there... it was as if the world was slowing down... like in a snow globe.
"Grave Portent of Things to Come"
or
"Bad Andy, Good Pizza"
We stumbled out of Shakespeare's Pizza stuffed to the gills (actually, most of us were only filled to the limits of our stomachs... the only one stuffed to the gills was Justin's mutant girlfriend Alice). It was February 13, 2002... a year after The Day the Damnedest Thing Happened... a year after Karl had bled to death on the grimy pavement of a dirty midget porn/sex shop while it (the dirty midget porn/sex hop) and the Denny's down the street burned to the ground.
We were piss drunk on the demon rum and other distilled spirits that Brent had brewed in the dorm room he shared with Greg Heckenberg under the name of "Mike Lock" (not the one he shared with Robin Lewis under the simple name "Dixon").
As our entourage, which included myself, Justin and Alice, Andy and Danielle, Brent and three girls he would only introduce as "my fine bitches"; made our way down the street back to The Ass Lounge (the house myself, Justin, Brent, and a numerous amount of various women who we often heard giggling in Brent's room at odd hours of the night) for a post-pizza-binge/booze-off party (we had rented both "Clerks II: Hardly Clerkin'" and Brent's favorite Kevin Smith spoof "Busty Nude Sex Shop Female Clerks: Always Jerkin'") Andy, who'd been slouched over since his eighth Scotch and Kahlua suddenly stood straight up.
"The game is over, ye soddin' wankers," he said in a British accent. We all stopped walking and turned to him.
"What's wrong Andy?" I asked, stopping to light up a cigarette.
"Nothing's wrong, mate," he said, pulling out a small automatic pistol. "It's just time for ye and Mr. Smith to pay the price for yer actions in the desert."
"Oh my God! Your one of them, aren't you?!" Justin cried, finally figuring out what I'd known for the last hour.
"One of who?" Alice asked.
"British Special Air Services Assassin," I said, before blowing a ring of smoke. "He's here because of a vendetta."
"You've been British all this time, Andy?" Danielle said, more than slightly shocked.
I laughed with a snort (more cool and defiant than Urkel-esque). "That's not Andy. This is a chameleon. He killed the real Andy six months ago and took his identity so he could get close enough to Justin and me to make the kill."
"Six months ago," Danielle said... but it was in October when we first..."
She trailed off, but we were all able to mentally fill in the blank. A year ago hearing something like that would have made me sick to my stomach, but I had been younger then. Younger and stupider.
"The dossier the SAS gave me about you must have been pretty old, ye wee git," "Andy" said with a smirk. "It was information about you when you were younger and stupider, obviously, because it said that you would never see me coming. How did you know the truth about me?"
"A girl," I said calmly, taking a drag of the fag (as my less than humble hitman might say).
"What do ye mean, 'a girl'?" he asked.
"For the last nine months, I've been dating a girl who grew up as part of the L'enfants du francais, a terrorist organization dedicated to freeing Quebec from Canadian rule. She taught me how to make out an undercover op in no time flat."
"Did she also give you this?" "Andy" asked, pulling the beretta I'd been carrying earlier out of a back pocket. He must have picked it off of me in the pizza place. I was now gunless... but not hopeless.
"So," said the assassin, "what's this girl's name?"
I took the spent cigarette out of my mouth and dropped it from my fingers.
"Lois."
Before the cigarette butt hit the ground, "Andy" was killed by sniper fire. I looked up to a young lady standing on the roof of Shakespeare's Pizza with a Lee-Enfield rifle and smiled. "That's my girl."
"What kind of night was this?" Justin asked, exasperated.
"A night with two things," I replied. "Bad Andy, good pizza."
"Never the End"
There are stories of love, and there are stories of hate. There are stories of bridges burned, and there are stories of dreams rebuilt.
There are stories where everything happens at once, and there are stories where nothing happens at all. There are stories where heroes win, and there are stories where the innocent die.
But, at the end of the day, all of these stories are the same. They all open upon the existence of the abstract, and they all come to a close.
These closings can range from everything from teary farewells, to hopeful hellos, and second chances. Sometimes, Santa doesn't get shot, and other times, coffins burn brightly into nothingness.
How does this story end?
That's simple. It started with lies, so I'll end it with simple honesty.
The truth of these matters, the truth of all things is inevitable, and once you hear it, it will all finally dawn on you the one thing that has kept you from reaching your dreams.
The simple truth is this:
NEXT:
...and it was all purple...
And he's your friend not mine
Because the piano has been drinking
And he's not my responsibility...
-Tom Waits
The Story Before, Part 6:
The Laptop Has Been Drinking
As we head steadily toward the conclusion of this particular series, I must admit that it has not been the cavalcade of fond remembrances I expected.
And as such, I have nothing wise to say about the random smatterings that follow. I started writing them on Brent's laptop out of boredom during a mock trial practice, and finished them a month or so later during one of those great undefined gatherings at his house.
Who knows what any of it actually says? I didn't read it...
"The Baker's Dozen"
My name is Lenar Clark, and this is my Windows Story. Once, this idiot by the name of Brent A. Jones let me use his laptop. Brent had a sad and sick obsession with a girl named Anna Baker, and he would talk about it nonstop, and sometimes hang outside of her house. I know, because I would see him from the window of her living room. Anna and I had been seeing each other, but it was mostly a physical thing, with no real emotion, so I had to end it, even if she was an adequate kisser. (I wrote that just to mess with Brent's diseased mind.)
"You Suck"
It was that time of the month, and it was enough to make me want to shoot myself.
"Flashers and Blasters"
This one time, I was driving on Bannister Road with my acquantances, Justin, Andy, and Brent, when they claimed that some girls were flashing them. I looked over into the car of the flashers, and I realized that I recognized them. They were British Special Air Service agents, and they undoubtedly were there to kill Justin and myself because of an ugly little incident back in Iraq during Opertion: Desert Storm. I pulled off of the road quickly, just as one of them was aiming some type of crude rocketry projectile at the car. I know a missile was fired at us, and it was only by swerving to the left that my companions missed the fantastic explosion that followed.
Later, after dropping them off in front to their cars, I came to the realization that the only way to rid myself of the assassins was to take them all out, and not in the juvenile, self-delusional way Andy, Justin, and Brent seemed to imply. Arming myself with a beretta and a zippo lighter, I went to dispatch my dispatchers.
Tracking them down to their hideout, an abandonned Winchell's Donuts, I burned the whole place down and went to find a copy of Superman in Action Comics #761.
I love comic books.
"Vague Recollections of a Night in Vegas"
It was a far happier time... when anything was possible. After so many years of morose solitude, there was this indescribable feeling gripping my heart. It'd been such a long time since I'd felt it, I didn't even know the name anymore.
It was hope.
A few weeks later it was gone... faster than it could have ever come.
Some nights, walking up on a steep hill in Las Vegas, you can actually look out and see the high water mark. That place where the wave finally broke and rolled back on itself.
"We Now Join Our Episode Already in Progress"
"What the hell is that mad man doing?!" someone shrieked.
"I don't know,but is that blood on that bat?"
Since I remember their concerns, I must assume that I heard them. So, I guess it's equally as logical to assume that I just didn't care.
"That Night in the Snow"
I could hear Patsy Cline's "Crazy" lightly in the background, and it didn't sit right with me. Somehow, I felt completely focused on argument, and yet, I wasn't really there... it was as if the world was slowing down... like in a snow globe.
"Grave Portent of Things to Come"
or
"Bad Andy, Good Pizza"
We stumbled out of Shakespeare's Pizza stuffed to the gills (actually, most of us were only filled to the limits of our stomachs... the only one stuffed to the gills was Justin's mutant girlfriend Alice). It was February 13, 2002... a year after The Day the Damnedest Thing Happened... a year after Karl had bled to death on the grimy pavement of a dirty midget porn/sex shop while it (the dirty midget porn/sex hop) and the Denny's down the street burned to the ground.
We were piss drunk on the demon rum and other distilled spirits that Brent had brewed in the dorm room he shared with Greg Heckenberg under the name of "Mike Lock" (not the one he shared with Robin Lewis under the simple name "Dixon").
As our entourage, which included myself, Justin and Alice, Andy and Danielle, Brent and three girls he would only introduce as "my fine bitches"; made our way down the street back to The Ass Lounge (the house myself, Justin, Brent, and a numerous amount of various women who we often heard giggling in Brent's room at odd hours of the night) for a post-pizza-binge/booze-off party (we had rented both "Clerks II: Hardly Clerkin'" and Brent's favorite Kevin Smith spoof "Busty Nude Sex Shop Female Clerks: Always Jerkin'") Andy, who'd been slouched over since his eighth Scotch and Kahlua suddenly stood straight up.
"The game is over, ye soddin' wankers," he said in a British accent. We all stopped walking and turned to him.
"What's wrong Andy?" I asked, stopping to light up a cigarette.
"Nothing's wrong, mate," he said, pulling out a small automatic pistol. "It's just time for ye and Mr. Smith to pay the price for yer actions in the desert."
"Oh my God! Your one of them, aren't you?!" Justin cried, finally figuring out what I'd known for the last hour.
"One of who?" Alice asked.
"British Special Air Services Assassin," I said, before blowing a ring of smoke. "He's here because of a vendetta."
"You've been British all this time, Andy?" Danielle said, more than slightly shocked.
I laughed with a snort (more cool and defiant than Urkel-esque). "That's not Andy. This is a chameleon. He killed the real Andy six months ago and took his identity so he could get close enough to Justin and me to make the kill."
"Six months ago," Danielle said... but it was in October when we first..."
She trailed off, but we were all able to mentally fill in the blank. A year ago hearing something like that would have made me sick to my stomach, but I had been younger then. Younger and stupider.
"The dossier the SAS gave me about you must have been pretty old, ye wee git," "Andy" said with a smirk. "It was information about you when you were younger and stupider, obviously, because it said that you would never see me coming. How did you know the truth about me?"
"A girl," I said calmly, taking a drag of the fag (as my less than humble hitman might say).
"What do ye mean, 'a girl'?" he asked.
"For the last nine months, I've been dating a girl who grew up as part of the L'enfants du francais, a terrorist organization dedicated to freeing Quebec from Canadian rule. She taught me how to make out an undercover op in no time flat."
"Did she also give you this?" "Andy" asked, pulling the beretta I'd been carrying earlier out of a back pocket. He must have picked it off of me in the pizza place. I was now gunless... but not hopeless.
"So," said the assassin, "what's this girl's name?"
I took the spent cigarette out of my mouth and dropped it from my fingers.
"Lois."
Before the cigarette butt hit the ground, "Andy" was killed by sniper fire. I looked up to a young lady standing on the roof of Shakespeare's Pizza with a Lee-Enfield rifle and smiled. "That's my girl."
"What kind of night was this?" Justin asked, exasperated.
"A night with two things," I replied. "Bad Andy, good pizza."
"Never the End"
There are stories of love, and there are stories of hate. There are stories of bridges burned, and there are stories of dreams rebuilt.
There are stories where everything happens at once, and there are stories where nothing happens at all. There are stories where heroes win, and there are stories where the innocent die.
But, at the end of the day, all of these stories are the same. They all open upon the existence of the abstract, and they all come to a close.
These closings can range from everything from teary farewells, to hopeful hellos, and second chances. Sometimes, Santa doesn't get shot, and other times, coffins burn brightly into nothingness.
How does this story end?
That's simple. It started with lies, so I'll end it with simple honesty.
The truth of these matters, the truth of all things is inevitable, and once you hear it, it will all finally dawn on you the one thing that has kept you from reaching your dreams.
The simple truth is this:
NEXT:
...and it was all purple...
Comments